Col·lege n.
 1. A collection, body, or society of persons engaged in common pursuits, or having common duties and interests, and sometimes, by charter, peculiar rights and privileges; as, a college of heralds; a college of electors; a college of bishops.
    The college of the cardinals.   --Shak.
    Then they made colleges of sufferers; persons who, to secure their inheritance in the world to come, did cut off all their portion in this.   --Jer. Taylor.
 2. A society of scholars or friends of learning, incorporated for study or instruction, esp. in the higher branches of knowledge; as, the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge Universities, and many American colleges.
 Note: ☞ In France and some other parts of continental Europe, college is used to include schools occupied with rudimentary studies, and receiving children as pupils.
 3. A building, or number of buildings, used by a college. “The gate of Trinity College.”
 4. Fig.: A community. [R.]
    Thick as the college of the bees in May.   --Dryden.
 College of justice, a term applied in Scotland to the supreme civil courts and their principal officers.
 The sacred college, the college or cardinals at Rome.

 ◄ ►